I have continued to draw indoor scenes. Here are the latest pictures:
Earlier Indoor Scenes are in this post: Indoor scenes (11 Apr – 1 May)
They are all in a Gamma Series Stillman and Bern sketchbook.
Here are three videos showing the sketchbook to date – with voiceover!
Here are more pictures of the Benton Dierdre iris. These are watercolours, done wet-in-wet, a technique I understand is called “tarashi-komi” in Japan.
Since I live in a flat, “stay at home” means “stay indoors”.
I started drawing the scenes around the flat.
These are the drawings up to today, 1st May.
Here is a postcard from indoors:
It shows a corner of the flat. You see the sun outside, and birds, and the city. You see parks, rivers and the great outdoors. But mostly, you see the sun on the carpet.
I drew St Giles’ Cripplegate, as seen from the window of the flat.
The church is surrounded by the buildings of the Barbican estate. To the right of the church is the City of London School for Girls. Behind it in the picture you see a representation of the Barbican block called “Wallside”, and then behind that, are the office blocks of the City. In the foreground is Frobisher Crescent.
St Giles’ was damaged by enemy action in the 1939-45 conflict. Artists showed the damage. I was particularly struck by the work of Sam Carter, and William Coldstream, shown by the East London Group in their excellent and informative Twitter stream (@EastLondonGroup) – their tweets are embedded below, if you scroll down. Here’s the picture by William Coldstream, 1946:
As you see in the picture above by William Coldstream, in 1946 the church itself was damaged, and it was surrounded by rubble. This picture must have been painted from the current location of the Museum of London. The damage was done in a bombing raid in about 1940. The plants have had 6 years to grow.
The Barbican was built on the area destroyed by bombing. St Giles was rebuilt.
Here is my view and my drawing in progress.
I have drawn St Giles before:
Here is St Giles Church from the Lakeside Terrace of the Barbican. While I drew this, three men were shovelling mud from the bottom of the lake. The mud is black and viscous and the men were remarkably cheerful in their task. They would have made good subjects for a drawing too. But for now,…
Today Urban Sketchers London held a “sketch crawl” in the Barbican. So I joined them. An astonishing number and diversity of people assembled inside the entrance of the Barbican Centre at the appointed time of 11am. I counted about 35 and then another dozen or so joined. All shapes and sizes of people, tall, short,…
Here is today’s sketch showing: London Wall – 2nd century AD Barber-Surgeons Hall – current building 1969, first hall, on this site 1441 St Giles Church – current building 1966, first church on this site by 1090 Barbican, Cromwell Tower, Wallside and Arts Centre – 1965-82 Braithwaite House – completed around 1963 White Collar Factory…
Here is a sketch from a staircase from the Barbican Podium, just outside the Dentists but just inside the old London Wall. Parts of the Roman London Wall are in the foreground, 2nd century AD. St Giles’ has Roman foundations and is much rebuilt. The church we see now is the 1966 restoration following designs…
Here are the tweets from the East London Group:
Sketching from the window, here is Ben Jonson, part of the Barbican estate.
The people who live on the top floor of Ben Jonson have sunlit roof gardens. You can see one person enjoying his garden. He sits just at the bottom of the blue fire escape ladder.
There is also an interesting void space shown in the lower right of the picture. It was empty when I was drawing, but sometimes someone’s legs are visible, using the space for sunbathing. Sometimes they set up a table and chairs there.
Here is work in progress. I used colours: Mars Yellow, Burnt Umber, Prussian Blue and a bit of Perinine Orange.
